Optoma HD8600 Physical Tour-3

Posted on October 15, 2013 by Art Feierman

Optoma HD8600 Remote Control

The HD8600 remote is medium sized, with a sleek shiny black look, with bright blue LED lighting. In fact, the lighting is excellent, just right, making the buttons easy to read, yet without being blinding in a darkened room.

I personally like both the size and the feel. It's definitely one of the easier remote controls to operate casually with one hand.

The range, however could have been better. If you have a large room, it may be tough to get a bounce off the screen to a projector mounted toward the back. Sitting 11 feet back from the screen, I really can't get a reliable bounce off the screen and wall to the projector which is 16 feet back.

On the top right are the Power, and Off buttons with the Off, right below the Power. The other seven buttons in the top part of the remote provide direct access to different image controls: Brightness, Contrast, Iris, Color, Pure (dynamic features) controls, and the Advanced menu.

Next comes the four navigation arrow keys in a round configuration with the Enter button in the center. Below to the left is the Menu button, and to the right, the (image) Mode button. The next row has two wide buttons, one for overscan the other, for the alternative; edge masking.

Then, a feature I don't recall seeing before on a remots - buttons for 12 volt trigger On and Off. Then comes four aspect ratio settings buttons, and finally seven input buttons.

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DLA-HD8600 Lens Throw

Well, there are three lens options. The standard lens for a 100" diagonal 16:9 screen, will let you place the front of the projector as close as 11.19 feet, or as far back as 14.0 feet. The short throw lens is a very short throw, fixed lens (no zoom). For that same 100" screen, the projector's front would be 5.59 feet, which is extremely close.

The long telephoto starts up where the standard lens lets off - at 14.0 feet, and out to 21 feet.

With the choice of the standard and telephoto zoom the Optoma's range is extremely similar to a typical LCD projector with 2:1 zoom (typically about 10 feet to 20 feet). Of course there's advantages to building lenses with less zoom range. It's easier to build higher quality, and perhaps more important, brighter lenses.If the standard lens works for you, the projector lists for $7999, but you can order it with one of the others, for $8999.